It's Been A Long Time Since I've Seen The Game But One Of The Things That Never Left Me Is How OFF Never

It's been a long time since I've seen the game but one of the things that never left me is how OFF never explicitly concludes the origins of the spectres.

Both the Judge and Japhet think the Queen made them. Enoch thinks they came from the dead. And Dedan doesn't even know what they are. One of the books in the library only goes so far as to speculate.

Since the canon will never give anything away and due to the ambiguous nature of the game, I'd like to throw in my own theory.

And it is that the spectres act like their world's errors. It was mentioned that Hugo created the main characters like the Queen and the Batter. After that, the Queen took over creating the rest of their world. It would make sense that in between all that expansion some mistakes would be made along the way. Like how the body might produce some abnormalities and deformed cellular components once in a while, the Queen would make a few missteps. The method of building their world was vague, so it could be possible that she couldn't correct some of them.

But because their world was already growing corrupt she couldn't assess the imperfections that were rapidly overtaking her kingdom or just wasn't aware it was happening. It was hinted many times in the game that she was already neglecting her duties both as a ruler and a mother. I could get the feeling she was not as resisting as much to what the Batter had planned. At least not as much as Dedan, who really believed that what the Batter was doing was deranged.

"There is nothing but the void after me."

"You don't even know his first name."

"You've been wrong since the beginning."

Her words sound like the words of someone who is trying to reason with and intends for reconsideration from the Batter. That what their world had now was better than the nothing he wants it to be. Maybe some guilt tripping for the Batter not being better than her.

The Queen says a lot of gibberish. And I can't begin to know how Mortis ghost really intended her character to be.

But it wouldn't be too farfetched to say that she might have alloted her time to her kingdom more than she did for Hugo. And would have likely known about the Spectres but was not able to reel them in. She was against the Batter destroying "beauty" and it would not make sense for her to create them to sabotage her own.

So maybe, the specters were just their own kind of mayhem.